


Shades of Grey

by rijane



Category: Chuck - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:55:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rijane/pseuds/rijane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He paid his dues in loyalty and got nothing but blood back. What happens when the loyal are lied to and the best are betrayed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades of Grey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freneticfloetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/gifts).



Sixty seconds for the door to swing shut. Three minutes to the guard station. One pass code, then an electric fence. After that, 20 miles of desert to the nearest town. The CIA prison was meant to be inescapable.

Fortunately, the CIA trained its agents very, very well.

***

Daniel Shaw loved two things without question: his country and his wife. And Eve had often teased him that it was in that order.

***

Shaw didn't need the Intersect to tell him how to kill a man. He knew the pop of a vertebrae, how long one breath would last, the force needed to slash the carotid. The night guard, part of a new shift, was no seasoned agent. He was strong, but inexperienced. And, most importantly, he had Shaw's height, build, and coloring.

***

Maybe Eve was right. Maybe he put the country he had vowed to protect above the woman he had vowed to love, honor and cherish. Only one of his loves had betrayed him and it sure as hell wasn't Eve. Eve, who had risked her life for her country, who had killed for her country, and who had died senselessly for her country.

They both knew there was a good chance they would lose the other. Few agents retired to Boca like Eve's parents or opened a tea house like Daniel's mother Mary. Daniel and Eve were in too deep for a “normal” life. The best Daniel had hoped for was to go before her. Daniel had never wanted his wife to die in the line of duty. Still, there was a certain honor in it. There was knowledge that Eve hadn't just died, she'd sacrificed. When he found out the truth, not only had the CIA taken her away from him, she died to him all over again.

***

Shaw had been shot, he'd nearly drowned, his chest was a map of scars – a knitting of skin in Algeria, dark half moon on his forearm from Laos, a star pucker from Kyrgyzstan, one long gash from somewhere he didn't remember. Shaw remembered Eve's hands as they traced each one as they lay together, in the same country, the same bed all too briefly. The pain of never seeing that smile again, never feeling her near him again, it dulled the pain of the knife against his flesh and the crack of his face against the metal corner of his bed. The guard was next, but fortunately for him, he was already dead.

***

With the help of the Intersect, Shaw had had a direct pipeline to all the CIA's dirty laundry, things that went far beyond his own personal tragedy. Military juntas, assassinations, trumped up charges and plenty of “rogue” agents that weren't so rogue. Chuck saw what he wanted to see, Shaw had decided. He didn't know the codes, he didn't know what a “clean house order” meant, what blood would flow. Chuck had never killed a teenager in Kabul because his country told him to. Chuck had never carpet bombed a wedding to get a man his superior officer had claimed was a terrorist. Shaw had thought he was a soldier of a just cause, but how many of the “terrorists” who'd died at his hands were simply men like him? Men who'd lost more than they could bear at the hands of the American government.

***

It was harder to breathe through a broken nose than Shaw remembered. He tried not to move as it dripped on the stolen uniform. His makeshift Governor was the hardest to get off, but Shaw had already broken his thumb to remove his cuffs. By the time the reinforcements had arrived, he had nearly passed out anyway. The trip to the base hospital was a blur of lights and voices, some cursing his name and offering vows for revenge. When Shaw peered at his escorts through swollen eyes, the flashes hit him in vivid technicolor: on his left, a Black Ops officer who'd witnessed the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by a fellow solider and said nothing; on the right, a seasoned “interrogator” who'd received a quick hire at the CIA for his efforts. But these were just the foot soldiers. Shaw's attention was much higher up.

***

The Intersect sat like a toad in his mind. While Chuck saw clear lines between good guys, Daniel saw murky histories of all those around him and he followed the words and deeds in his mind, looking desperately for the order that had killed Eve. What had they wanted? What could possibly be accomplished by killing a trained agent into whom the US government had sunken hundreds of thousands of dollars of training? There was the inkling of doubt that maybe, just maybe Eve had been the betrayer, but Daniel couldn't make himself believe. He needed to know what she had found out or what she had done to bring the force of the American government against her.

He followed the threads of files in his mind, from Operation Panther to the Somali mujahadeen to the war lord who'd traded on US support and now controlled wide swaths of jungle with child soldiers. These were men and women who'd hurt people, not just the US government, and they were people who deserved to suffer. Daniel hadn't followed enough twists and turns to reach Eve's file yet, but he had other names, plenty of them. Some had wrapped themselves in the red, white, and blue for their crimes, others were more direct in their greed and avarice. The list was long, longer than he had time, but it would keep him busy.

***

Shaw couldn't wait long. Military hospital staff, like any other, was light in the middle of the night, but sooner or later someone would look past the bruises and broken bones or a blood test would out him. When the first pain killer kicked in, he moved fast. Stolen badges, then a stolen car, and another, leaving a zig zag path north until he passed out on a remote highway just as the sun peeked over the horizon.

***

He dreamt of Eve. Daniel didn't know whether he hated them or looked forward to them. For a few hours, she was alive. She was wandering through Paris, pulling him into museums and cathedrals, they were laying beneath a giant stained glass window as tourists snapped photos and Latin prayers rolled from priests' lips. He wanted to see her eyes, but she wouldn't turn. And then he realized with a shake they weren't in Paris at all. Eve was in a coffin and her eyes would never open again.

***

Shaw glanced in the rear view mirror at his new face. Nothing that would fool a professional, but not the face Eve had fallen for. Some of the cuts would become scars. He was planning to let his broken nose heal crooked and hadn't even noticed the chipped tooth until now.

He'd need a new photo. A Canadian passport in the name of Adam Smith, with enough liquid assets to get him around the world and back again, waited in Sun Valley. He gave a hint of smile. It was an identity he'd put together for practice with Eve. It was one that wouldn't last long, between the CIA and the Ring, but without the Governor, neither would he.

***

Daniel wondered if she had known it was going to happen. If she'd suspected the scheduled drop would end with a bullet from the pretty blonde passing her by. He wasn't sure which was better, knowing the end was coming, like he did, or dying in a sudden burst of violence like Eve. Had her final thoughts been of him? Something as innocuous as their dinner plans that night? Daniel, at least, knew he would die as he lived: thinking of her.

***

Shaw would rather have started with the General who'd not only knowingly ordered torture and bombings, but had been known to frequent the underage sex tourism of Thailand, but he needed to start easier. The first target was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of many warlords keeping the country in violent chaos for decades. This one had regularly kidnapped small boys from their villages and forced them to chop off the hands of those who refused to go. The man had two dozen wives, with the youngest only 12. He was about to sodomize another when Shaw's bullet struck him between the eyes.

***

Sitting in a cell for 23 hours a day left Daniel with plenty of time for thought and regret. He'd wasted the time and resources he'd had with Chuck and his team. Like the guards, like himself not too long ago, they were just the foot soldiers.

This time, however, he wouldn't waste time using the Ring to get his revenge, he wouldn't get involved in the political machinations of the Agency. He would start where the evil grew, in the seats of power.

***

He made it through five countries with the static bursts of the Intersect doing little more than giving him migraines. Unlike Chuck, Shaw didn't rely on the Intersect for his personal missions. He could shoot a dictator at 50 feet without help. Without access to a CIA database, though, he needed the flashes to get at his targets. After Pakistan, the nosebleeds began.

The mechanical memories burst like fireworks in his mind. It occurred to Shaw that it might be burning away things he'd rather it didn't. Had he lost cousins? School plays? His Eagle Scout award ceremony? But what scared him most was that it might be taking away all he had left of Eve: his memories.

He only hoped they wouldn't drive him into insanity before the flashes settled on the one he wanted.

***

With no contacts at the CIA or the NSA, Shaw was simply gambling on how long it would take until John Casey showed up with guns blazing. He had avoided US-friendly locales – Europe, North America. But he was getting desperate, to the point of recklessness. He'd taken out an American adviser in Afghanistan who'd both bombed villages and stolen millions in aid, and a Pashtun elder killed three Red Cross workers and started yet another skirmish at the border. These were the things that would get attention. Still, nothing of Eve and the pain was getting worse.

Shaw decided to retrace her steps on that final night. He booked a ticket to Paris that night.

***

Whatever the CIA claimed later, Eve was a damned good spy. Daniel knew little about her missions that didn't involve him. She kept her confidences and she always got the job done. He knew little of her final hours that wasn't in the video or the lies in the CIA report.

He waited until dark, then followed her footsteps through the cobbled paths. Spurts of information sizzled at the back of his mind. Microdata. Defensive program. Past what he believed was her drop point. The flashes began to hit him hard as he crossed the street. He spotted a church, a once and future haven in his spiritual storm, its lights shining on the other side of a huge stained glass window, and stumbled toward it as reams of data – Eve's check-in times, agent testimonials – raced through his mind.

The flashes drove Shaw to his knees. Eve, coded transmissions from her locations that went to no known CIA agents, times, places. He waited for the smoking gun and saw nothing but coincidence and a kill order.

At last came the words: Psy-ops concludes… harness his grief and anger against the Ring … Most effective motivation …

Laughter burbled like blood in his chest. In the end, the CIA had gotten exactly what it had wanted. For a while anyway. Shaw had to stop himself from whipping a Bible through the stained glass window before him, destroying this place like the CIA had destroyed him.

But Shaw just sat, waiting. For the end, for God, for Eve. He wasn't sure. The strength to move would be hours away. He felt the drip of blood hit his lip and the world began to spin. He slumped over the pew in front of him and let the darkness take him.

Minutes or hours later, Shaw's eyes opened in a darkened room, the only light shining faintly through the stained glass. He didn't know why until the sound of footsteps came

“Hello, Chuck.” Shaw didn't bother to turn around. He wasn't sure if he had the strength.

“Shaw.”

“I figured the CIA would catch on if I came here.”

“We knew the minute you touched down in Paris. Casey and Sarah are outside and my Intersect is working just fine. So don't think you can get away this time.”

Shaw raised his head slightly as Chuck's shadow fell over him.

“There will come a time, Chuck, when you discover the world you think you're saving is what you thought at all. I paid my dues in loyalty and got nothing but blood in return.”

“Eve was a Ring agent, Shaw. She was everything we were fighting against!” Chuck eyed the door nervously and his hand hovered over the lump Daniel recognized as a gun. Still gun shy after all this time, Bartowski, he thought.

“This world isn't as black and white as we want it to be,” the pauses between his words grew longer.

“Murdering my father in cold blood looks pretty black and white to me,” Chuck's voice had an edge to it.

It took Shaw a moment to respond, his breath catching and thoughts moving like molasses.

“I know my sins now and killing your father was the least of them.”

“Do you know what you did to my family? To my sister? To me?” Chuck's voice had risen with every question and he was just inches from Shaw's face, fists clenched white. “And you wanted to do more. You'd have killed everyone in the Buy More.”

“Trust me, Chuck, I know everything I've done.”

A tremor rocked Shaw and screaming pain blossomed in his skull. He was afraid he'd lost control of his bowels. Or else the nosebleed had become a gusher. Beyond the pain, Shaw heard a voice. A familiar voice.

Chuck was saying something, too.

“... back to the U.S. … extradition…”

But beyond him was a lightness, a smile. Her voice saying his name.

Somehow the light in the church had grown. Chuck's words fell away as Daniel strained to hear the the woman's faint but familiar tone.

Daniel.

“Eve,” gasped Shaw and at last let go.


End file.
